Carnival Cruise Lines aimed to increase bookings when it tapped Google Mobile Ads to deliver platform-specific ads such as click to call to mobile users searching for travel information.

As a result of the campaign, the ratio of sales calls to service calls into the inbound call center are claimed to have increased by 20 percent. Additionally, Carnival was able to boost booking on mobile devices 175 percent over a three-month period, it was claimed.

?With more and more people searching the Internet from their phones, mobile advertising has become a great new way to reach users of high-end mobile devices,? said Samantha Hartsfield, search account manager at Razorfish, Chicago. ?We have already worked with several clients to successfully use Google Mobile Ads to drive more leads and conversions.

?Carnival was curious as to whether such a considered and complex purchase like booking a cruise would be executed on a mobile phone,? she said. ?It?s logical that consumers would investigate and purchase things like retail items on a mobile device, but what about booking travel and cruises?

?Together with Carnival Cruise Lines, we set out to answer that question.?

Razorfish is Carnival Cruise Lines? ad agency.

Searching for conversions
To see if mobile advertising would drive traffic and conversions cost-effectively, Razorfish conducted several search-based advertising campaign experiments using Google Mobile Ads for Carnival.

Razorfish duplicated Carnival?s online ad campaigns in the cruise line's AdWords account but switched the campaign settings to target high-end mobile devices.

To measure performance and determine how users interact with high-end mobile phones to investigate vacation and travel, Razorfish tracked several conversion metrics.

The team set up online mobile tracking that let them to see precisely when users dropped off before the cruise booking process was complete.

Additionally, they were also able to tie some conversions occurring over the phone or on the Carnival Web site to their mobile search campaign if the conversion originated from a mobile ad.

This conversion attribution was only valid if consumers opened the confirmation email from Carnival on the same mobile devices as the original search query.

?We saw significant drop-offs when users were asked to type in information,? Ms. Hartsfield said. ?But what was really encouraging is that they were calling Carnival or going to the Web site afterward to complete the booking process.?

Next, Razorfish and Carnival Cruise Lines decided to test ways to optimize the mobile campaigns. They launched device targeting with even more detailed ad copy using keyword phrases such as ?book your next vacation on your iPhone today.?

Additionally, Carnival and its agency added click-to-call numbers in the mobile search ads.

?Carnival saw click to call as a great value, because the cost of a call is the same as the cost of a click,? Ms. Hartsfield said. ?It was a low-risk, high-value proposition.?

Right call
The ratio of sales calls to service calls into Carnival?s inbound call center as a result of its click-to-call mobile search campaign was 20 percent higher.

Overall bookings increased as well.

While there is typically a small seasonal spike in bookings in January and February, Carnival claimed to see a 175 percent increase in bookings on high-end mobile devices from January to March. 

Despite the fact that the number of bookings occurring on the Web site is substantially higher, conversion rates from click-to-call leads are comparable.

Carnival or Razorfish would not disclose hard numbers beyond percentages.

?Driving call center volumes really wasn?t the top priority ? improving online bookings was, but offering the call-to-click option actually drove more interested leads overall to convert,? Ms. Hartsfield said.

?Carnival is now working on building a more engaging experience that keeps users in the funnel so they don?t drop off due to limitations of the mobile platform such as typing in a lot of information.

?With Google Mobile Ads and click to call, Carnival Cruise Lines is ahead of the curve in understanding how consumers use mobile devices in the context of travel ? and it's driving tangible returns,? she said.